"There is always a form"
--Bill Dixon
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Bustle rift in some adrift supermarket. Craggy man buckled wheelchair whirring bulgelevel no fool fooling them not for a purpleheaded throbber reason more to flap.
One in five with sores he sees there where the world comes from heated A bombs diving from cunts to tax the starvers cancersacking. Past stalky ridiculousness of human form front back laughing tween tears when tears x rayically acid rain twist clockhands joyful showing joy backass fro breaking every bone in bodies cellophaned boneless breast make freezerfit full.
Whirlychair craggyman lowdowning clefts and scoops, looking yon to looking again to cartoon morbid stalkies, scribble skin short hair to bristle em redfaced at cadabrawed liney public head post defecate smell urched ooue ooue pokerfaced you know damn well...inks the no direction of lookerson to turn at sunny park down coitus...fodder for deathy bedroom angst speels whatall mankind spurts.
Craggy man strikes again.
Z notions of entireness only direction of his harpy wheels yettho going to gone parkinglot celebrity status, get out of my face, blush at your own boner, go home get lost leastways.
Dread holy technicolor confession looking for yourself sunday funnypages, strikes again.
Unmerited jeans drabbering him non, rud sun marking somewhere, Z looping crowd folks burping tacks, vogue.
Riverside mental patients wane eloquent poesy epic cops knocking portacan doors down gonna get you what do you think you think you can light up and think differently in any way than the rest of us where are your genitals fucker, though these questions they are not asked out loud like dogma.
Z sees all of this that reaches his ears.
Spandex allwheres, brains meltdown to shit fester souls stoop to pool floating under skies only crotch ass chest full spandexed so that crotch ass chest are not crotch ass chest or suggestive or crotch ass chest or belonging to anything or anyone but crotch ass chest are spandexed shouting crotch ass chest ergo we am.
Ground strewn identification of otherwisers, tossed identification otherwise penalty.
Identification photo only crotch ass chest decoupage scrambled tooth and nail.
Shame uninvented, figleafless.
You want Henry James.
John Crouse, Lapse One from the book Lapses
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"But can they play jazz?" Remember that one? Maybe you are too young to remember that--but somehow I think that, uh, qualifier is still alive and well. When I was a wee-tot, "Free Jazz" or "Improvised music" (or "Skronk" as some call it) somehow didn't ever quite count as music if it was played by people who couldn't play Jazz--no matter how it sounded. It was always a 3/5th music if you will.
Yet if you could play an excruciatingly meticulously diatonic solo without one trace of dissonance over Autumn Leaves, somehow your "free jazz" or "improvised music" (or "Skronk") was somehow more legitimate, more real--no matter how it sounded.
Matt Lavelle didn't come under fire so much for his form, but for his alleged "subliteracy." If words still meant anything (and the don't) we could debate M. Lavelle's literacy--perhaps setting up a chart or a graph with a system to tabulate grammatical infractions and from there determine a co-efficient against which we could plot a curve whereby we ultimately (and numerically) answer the question once and for all if Matt Lavelle is "literate."
In the meantime, Matt has written a great deal--literate or not--and regardless of his "literacy" or his heretical use of our beloved punctuation (and more to the point, his occasional playing of a b5 when a 5 would have been the more harmonically, if not morally appropriate choice) I, along with many many others, have read Matt's writing and have thought deeply about some of the ideas he has presented. So in a way, he's already won. So much for the importance (let alone centrality) lexicographic propriety.
(You want Henry James)
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In a further kismetic synchronism, I happend upon Bassist Reuben Radding opining about "form":
I feel these days that a lot of the community I'm a part of in NY are less than psyched about free-improv groups, and are more interested in projects with some amount of composition, and I think I understand why (lack of a feeling of evolution, perhaps?)The lack of a feeling of evolution? What about the fact of evolution? (Do words mean anything?)
While I can't vouch for Reuben and his (the?) "community's" feelings about evolution, I would certainly hate to have to argue that "free-improv" has not evolved.
Is music evolving towards or away from a written set of instructions? Is the end game in musical evolution the ability to read notes from a piece of paper or is the end game in musical evolution the ability to make music with out any props, signs, rules or instruction?
Is evolution the sole dominion of clever score writers? Is it the sole dominion of the monitizers?
Hey, here's an idea, how about a Top Ten List of the most evolved "not-free improv" improvisers, what they've evolved from and what they have evolved into.
Then (afterwards, of course) what say "we" make a separate (but equal) Top Ten list of the most un-evolved "free improv" improvisers, what they haven't evolved from and what they haven't evolved into.
Any takers?
(You want Henry James)
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Richie Aprile taught us the only time you back pedal is when you are going to drive over Beansie again--crackling any previously uncracked bones. As if the ultimately, comparatively vanilla Herr Kelsey did anything of the kind. "Formally conventional" as hurt word. That Chris Kelsey sure knows how to hit where it hurts--a real social liability that one...
Meanwhile David R. Adler makes this smear
And that’s what I suspect Chris means. For “formally conventional,” read “not free jazz,” not explicitly tied to the post-Ayler school of skronk.’which is far more offensive on far more levels than anything I've read by Chris Kelsey--and yet no one is giving David R. Adler the gears. Is that because no one noticed or is it because no one cares? Either way, vhat a vacky voild!
(You want Henry James)
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The future:
Total punctuation excellence. Every world spelled correctly. Nothing left to chance, not even chance, which is carefully scripted and administered within a carefully ordered, pre-determined parameters precisely gauged to successfully partner with work schedules and accepted societal and behavioural norms. Sponsorships and larger cultural/corporate support awarded to those able to vaguely disguise-yet-uphold the musical code of ethics most clearly annunciated by Laurence Welk. Total market/social exclusion for those who show the slightest signs of criticality or penchant for straying from said Welkian mores.
YOU WANT HENRY JAMES!
